The girl opened her mouth several times before any speech came out-groping sentences about Tallinn and a car. The words ran together like they had before, connecting to one another in the wrong places, linking up prematurely, and they started to tickle strangely in Aliide’s ear. It wasn’t the girl’s speech or her Russian accent; it was something else- there was something strange about her Estonian. Although the girl, with her dirty young skin, belonged to today, her sentences were awkward; they came from a world of brittle paper, moldy old albums emptied of pictures. Aliide removed a hairpin from her head and shoved it into her ear canal, turned it, took it out, and put it back in her hair. The tickle remained. She had a flashing thought: The girl wasn’t from anywhere around here-maybe not from Estonia at all. But what foreigner would know this kind of provincial language? The village priest was a Finn who spoke Estonian. He had studied the language when he came here to work, and he knew it well, wrote all his sermons and eulogies in Estonian, and no one even bothered to complain about the shortage of Estonian priests anymore. But this girl’s Estonian had a different flavor, something older, yellow and moth-eaten. There was a strange smell of death in it.
From the slow sentences it became clear that the girl was on her way to Tallinn in a car with someone and had got into a fight with this someone, and the someone had hit her, and she had run away. “Who were you with?” Aliide finally asked.
The girl’s lips trembled a moment before she mumbled that she had been traveling with her husband.
Her husband? So she was married? Or was she a decoy for thieves? For a criminal decoy, she was rather incoherent. Or was that the idea, to arouse sympathy? That no one would close their door on a poor girl in the state she was in? Were the thieves after Aliide’s belongings or something in the woods? They’d been taking everyone’s wood and sending it to the West, and Aliide’s land restitution case wasn’t even close to completion, although there shouldn’t have been any problem with it. Old Mihkel in the village had ended up in court when he shot some men who had come to cut trees on his land. He hadn’t gotten in much trouble for it-there had been some surreptitious coughing and the court had taken the hint. Mihkel’s process to get his land back had been only half completed when the Finnish logging machinery suddenly appeared and started to cut down his trees. The police hadn’t meddled in the matter- after all, how could they protect one man’s woods all night, especially if he didn’t even officially own them? So the woods just disappeared, and in the end Mihkel shot a couple of the thieves. Anything was possible in this country right now- but nobody was going to cut trees on Mihkel’s land without permission anymore.
The village dogs started to bark, the girl startled and tried to peek through the chain-link fence into the road, but she didn’t look toward the woods.
“Who were you with?” Aliide repeated.
The girl licked her lips, peered at Aliide and at the fence, and started rolling up her sleeves. Her movements were clumsy-but considering her condition and her story, graceful enough. Her mottled arms were revealed and she stretched them toward Aliide as if in proof of what she was saying, at the same time turning her head toward the fence to hide it.
Aliide shuddered. The girl was definitely trying to elicit sympathy-maybe she wanted inside the house to see if there was anything to be stolen. They were real bruises, though. Nevertheless, Aliide said:
“Those look old. They look like old bruises.”
The freshness of the marks and their bloodiness brought more sweat to Aliide’s upper lip. The bruises were covered up again, and there was silence. That’s the way it always went. Maybe the girl noticed Aliide’s distress, because she pulled the fabric over the bruises with a sudden, jerky movement, as if she hadn’t realized until that moment the shame in revealing them, and she said anxiously, looking toward the fence, that it had been dark and she hadn’t known where she was, she just ran and ran. The broken sentences ended with her assuring Aliide that she was already leaving. She wouldn’t stay there to trouble her.
“Wait right there,” Aliide said. “I’ll bring some valerian and water.” She went toward the house and glanced at the girl again from the doorway. She was perched motionless on the bench. It was clear she was afraid. You could smell the fear from a long way off. Aliide noticed herself starting to breathe through her mouth. If the girl was a decoy, she was afraid of the people who sent her here. Maybe Aliide should be, too-maybe she should take the girl’s trembling hands as a sign that she should lock the door and stay inside, keep the girl out, come what may, just so she would go away and leave an old person in peace. Just so she wouldn’t stay here spreading the repulsive, familiar smell of fear. Maybe there was some gang about, going through all the houses. Maybe she should call and ask. Or had the girl come to her house specifically? Had someone heard that Talvi was coming from Finland to visit? But that wasn’t a big deal as it used to be.
In the kitchen, Aliide ladled water into a mug and mixed in a few drops of valerian. She could see the girl from the window-she hadn’t moved at all. Aliide took some valerian herself, and a spoonful of heart medicine, although it wasn’t mealtime, then went back outside and offered the mug. The girl took it, sniffed at it carefully, set it down on the ground, pushed it over, and peered at the liquid as it sank into the earth. Aliide felt annoyed. Was water not good enough?
The girl assured her to the contrary, but she wanted to know what Aliide had put in it.
“Just valerian.”
The girl didn’t say anything.
“Do I have any reason to lie to you?”
The girl glanced at Aliide. There was something canny in her expression. It troubled Aliide, but she fetched another mug of water and the valerian bottle from the kitchen, and gave them to the girl, who was satisfied once she had smelled it that it was just water, seemed to recognize the valerian, and poured a few drops into the mug. Aliide was annoyed. Was the girl teasing her? Maybe she was just plain crazy. Escaped from the hospital. Aliide remembered a woman who got out of Koluvere, got an evening gown from the free box, and went running through the village spitting on strangers as they passed by.
“So the water’s all right?”
The girl gulped too eagerly, and liquid streamed down her chin.
“A moment ago I tried to rouse you and you yelled, ‘No water.’ ”
The girl clearly didn’t remember, but her earlier sobs still echoed in Aliide’s head, reverberating from one side of her skull to the other, spinning back and forth, beckoning to something much older. When a person’s head has been pushed under the water enough times, the sound they let out is surprisingly consistent. That familiar sound was in the girl’s voice. A sputtering, without end, hopeless. Aliide’s hand fought with her. She was aching to slap the girl. Be quiet. Beat it. Get lost. But maybe she was wrong. Maybe the girl had just gone swimming once and nearly drowned- maybe that’s why she was afraid of water. Maybe Aliide was letting her imagination run away with her, making connections where there weren’t any. Maybe the girl’s yellowed, time-eaten language had got Aliide thinking of her own.
“Hungry? Are you hungry?”
The girl looked like she hadn’t understood the question or like she had never been asked such a thing.
“Wait here,” Aliide commanded, and went inside again, closing the door behind her. She soon returned with black bread and a dish of butter. She had hesitated about the butter for a moment but had decided to bring it with her. She shouldn’t be so stingy that she couldn’t spare a little dab for the girl. A very good decoy, indeed, to take in someone like Aliide, who had seen it all, and so easily. The compulsive ache in Aliide’s hand spread to her shoulder. She held on to the butter plate too tightly, to restrain her desire to strike.
The mud-stained map was no longer on the grass. The girl must have put it in her pocket.
The first slice of bread disappeared into the girl’s mouth whole. It wasn’t until the third that she had the patience to put butter on it, and even then she did it in a panic, shoving a heap of it into the middle of the slice, then folding it in half and pressing it together to spread the butter in between, and taking a bite. A crow cawed on the gate, dogs barked in the village, but the girl was so focused on the bread that the sounds didn’t make her flinch like they had before. Aliide’s galoshes were shining like good polished boots. The dew was rising over her feet from the damp grass.
“Well, what now? What about your husband? Is he after you?” Aliide asked, watching her closely as she ate. It was genuine hunger. But that fear. Was it only her husband she was afraid of?
“He is after me. My husband is.”
“Why don’t you call your mother, have her come and get you? Or let her know where you are?”
The girl shook her head.
“Well, call some friend, then. Or some other family member.”
